TEAM ARKEA - SAMSIC

The dream of a territory (which was annexed to France in 1532 but has retained its distinct flavour) ever since Hinault retired came true in 2014 with the Tour de France debut of an unashamedly Breton team whose main sponsor was the regional council, headed by the politician and great cycling aficionado Jean-Yves Le Drian. It was the first regional team from the West (more specifically, South—South-West) to take part in the Tour de France since 1961.

Its passion for cycling and four Tour winners (Lucien Petit-Breton, Jean Robic, Louison Bobet and Bernard Hinault) make Brittany a hotbed and, in some way, the cradle of French cycling. However, more than twenty years have gone by since the last time a Breton rider wore the yellow jersey (Stéphane Heulot in 1996). Before signing for the team from his home region, Warren Barguil ended a 23-year drought in Foix in 2017, when he became the first Breton to win a stage since Pascal Lino in 1994.

The team was born in 1994 as an amateur outfit on the initiative of industrialist and cycling lover Jean Floc'h. It became a professional squad in 2005 and entered the second division of the sport in 2011. Bretagne-Séché Environnement became Fortuneo, which joined forces with a variety of co-sponsors, and then Arkéa–Samsic. The team turned heads in its first Tour de France starts thanks to joining numerous breakaways, Brice Feillu's 16th place overall in 2014 (an exploit he matched in 2017) and the striking disqualification in 2015 of its Argentinian leader Eduardo Sepúlveda, who lost his nerve after a mechanical problem and hitched a ride in a car, not to mention British sprinter Dan McLay bursting onto the stage with a third place in Montauban in 2016. New recruit André Greipel, on the other hand, was a big flop, while Warren Barguil won the French championship and finished tenth in the 2019 Tour in his return to the roots. However, the signing of the Colombian Nairo Quintana, still a contender for the yellow jersey at age 30, takes the Breton team to a whole new level.